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anyone using ExFAT drives for sessions?
Hi everyone! I'm about to build a dual boot Win10/Hackintosh (Mojave), and would like my session & sample drives to be readable and writable from both OSes, so I don't have to have duplicates of everything.
The question is how to format the drives. It seems like ExFAT is the most compatible filesystem with both systems. Though it is native to neither, they both have stable read-write support. (The only other filesystem that I know of that has stable read-write on both is FAT32, which I'd really prefer to avoid.) Has anyone here tried running sessions / sample libraries from ExFAT drives in MacOS and/or Win10? Any thoughts, or other suggestions? thanks in advance! ~peter in athens
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* Macbook Air : M1 ~ 16gb ~ 1tb ~ Ventura latest * Hackintosh : i9-9900k ~ 16gb ~ 3tb ~ Monterey 12.6.1 * PT 23.6 + Ableton Suite 11.3 * Soundtoys + Valhalla + Fabfilter + Spitfire * RME Fireface UCX II ~ Arturia Keylab Essential 49 * various clarinets, trumpets, flutes, plucky stringy thingies |
#2
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Re: anyone using ExFAT drives for sessions?
I've used ExFAT without any issues on session drives. I don't see any reason why there would be any issue with a sample drive. I am now using a dual boot Mac and am using Paragon Software's HFS+ on the Windows side and their NTFS product on the Mac side. This gives me access to the system drives from either environment. Currently I keep my sessions on the Mac system drive so accessing them via PS HFS+ app is no issue. They also have an APFS product for Windows.
https://www.paragon-software.com/about/products-a-to-z/
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PT 2024.3 DP 11.31 VEP 7.x with various VIs NI Komplete Audio 6 on HP Envy 8G i7 Quad Laptop Win11 MOTU 828es ADA8200 MTP-AV on HP Z2 G4 Xeon Workstation Win11 MOTU M4 on MacBook Air M2 2023 Sonoma.4.1 |
#3
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Re: anyone using ExFAT drives for sessions?
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* Macbook Air : M1 ~ 16gb ~ 1tb ~ Ventura latest * Hackintosh : i9-9900k ~ 16gb ~ 3tb ~ Monterey 12.6.1 * PT 23.6 + Ableton Suite 11.3 * Soundtoys + Valhalla + Fabfilter + Spitfire * RME Fireface UCX II ~ Arturia Keylab Essential 49 * various clarinets, trumpets, flutes, plucky stringy thingies |
#4
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Re: anyone using ExFAT drives for sessions?
I would only caution that I've had issue with sample players (Kontakt etc) loading from ExFAT. Not sure if the problems I had have been resolved recently or not. This was a while ago.
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Tim Reisig Main System: Pro Tools Ultimate 23.12, HD Native TB, HD OMNI, S3/Artist Transport/Eucontrol 22.20, Apogee Rosetta 800 w/XHD card, Avid 96 I/O Mac OS 13.2.1, 2018 Mac Mini 3Ghz i5, 32Gig RAM System 2: Pro Tools 23.9 (no Hardware), Mac OS 13.2.1, MBP (Macbook Air M2, 2022 24Gig Ram) |
#5
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Re: anyone using ExFAT drives for sessions?
Just an opinion, but I think I would use HFS for all but the Windows drive and install MediaFour MacDrive so Windows can read the rest of the drives
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HP Z4 workstation, Mbox Studio https://www.facebook.com/search/top/...0sound%20works The better I drink, the more I mix BTW, my name is Dave, but most people call me.........................Dave |
#6
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Re: anyone using ExFAT drives for sessions?
+1. I use exFAT only for a drive used specifically for transferring MAC--->WIN or WIN--->MAC. For sessions: NTFS on WIN, HFS+ on MAC. Also, MacDrive works.
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Desktop build: PT 2020.5 / Win 11 / i9-11900K @ 5.1GHz / 64GB / 4TB NVMe PCIe 4 / Gigabyte Z590 Vision D / PreSonus 2626 Laptop: PT 2020.5 / Win 11 / i5-12500H / 16GB / 1TB NVMe / Lenovo IdeaPad 5i Pro / U-PHORIA UMC1820 Ancient/Legacy (still works!): PT 5 & 6 / OS9 & OSX / Mac G4 / DIGI 001 Click for audio/video demo Click for resume |
#7
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Re: anyone using ExFAT drives for sessions?
Quote:
Hmm, thanks. Macdrive is significantly more expensive than paragon hfs+... are there advantages? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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* Macbook Air : M1 ~ 16gb ~ 1tb ~ Ventura latest * Hackintosh : i9-9900k ~ 16gb ~ 3tb ~ Monterey 12.6.1 * PT 23.6 + Ableton Suite 11.3 * Soundtoys + Valhalla + Fabfilter + Spitfire * RME Fireface UCX II ~ Arturia Keylab Essential 49 * various clarinets, trumpets, flutes, plucky stringy thingies |
#8
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Re: anyone using ExFAT drives for sessions?
I want to offer some words of caution and suggestion through my experiences with ExFat, Paragon, and MacDrive solutions.
ExFat: While it is compatible with MacOS and Windows, the risk is that corruption can occur easily with mistakes such as unintentional disconnection and power outage. Corrupt or damaged Exfat drives are near impossible to recover, unlike NTFS, HFS, and APFS which have a log file that is used for data recovery (I have recovered terabytes of data from corruption to accidental formatting). My advice is to work directly from natively journaled/index file formats such as NTFS, APFS, HFS+, and then backup the file to ExFAT. I don't recommend working directly from ExFat...its too risky. Paragon HFS/APFS/NTFS: I have mostly good experiences using paragon software. However, I did experience an issue this week (which led to forum hunting) using their APFS solution in Windows 11. Somehow, I had important folders missing when I plugged the drive back to Mac. I was able to recover everything using Prosoft's disk recovery software. I'm still investigating the root cause, but I remember reading that the current solutions are considered beta for APFS partitions. I use APFS for all SSDs for MacOS and HFS for HDDs. MacDrive Currently in beta for APFS and only read capability at this time. HFS should work normally in read/write. I have used them in the past (v10) and the experience was mostly good. Due to recent experiences I have increased my caution to stay as native as possible and using ExFat strictly for consolidating files. Its an extra step to copy back and forth, but I have realized that exfat is particularly good at doig just that....being a large, centralized storage, but not working directly from. IF YOU CHOOSE to work from this format, I recommend you have consistent backup routine depending on how much you write to it daily. Peace
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X570 Aorus Elite AX | AMD 5900x | 128GB RAM | RTX 3060 ||| MBP M1 16GB |
#9
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Re: anyone using ExFAT drives for sessions?
Personally I would just run on NTFS and APFS and copy sessions between filesystems if needed. You can set up workflow/ways to make this easier, like copying sessions after work back to a staging area (maybe the same place archives/backups are made from). But do not use ex-FAT to run sessions from, it's not supported and will cause issues. ex-FAT is fine for *transferring* a session between systems.
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#10
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Re: anyone using ExFAT drives for sessions?
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And listen to this guy whenever we are talking about storage systems.
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Janne What we do in life, echoes in eternity. |
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